


Vivamus

by billspilledquill



Category: Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: First Love, Insecurity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, it's about the tender gays don't expect anything else from me, they WILL be in love and WILL be melodramatic about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 16:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21449236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: "Let me embrace you," Maurice said. Clive looked at him and smiled, moved his arms about, then quietly slid his body against his.
Relationships: Clive Durham/Maurice Hall
Comments: 50
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eyeslikerain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyeslikerain/gifts).

> A thank you for every little Maurice discussion we had, I hope this can count as a token of my appreciation, my friend!

> _Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus_  
_rumoresque senum severiorum_  
_omnes unius aestimemus assis_  
_soles occidere et redire possunt:_  
_nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,_  
_nox est perpetua una dormienda._

“Let me embrace you,” Maurice said. There is nothing more natural than this, to look at his friend and sigh deeply, with a fondness that youth called passion and poets called love. Clive looked at him and smiled, moved his arms about, then quietly slid his body against his. 

Clive never talked much during moments like these. His half-lidded eyes stared at his friend’s breast, or hands, but never directly at him. He would open his mouth, then his lips closed, sometimes sucking his bottom lip with his teeth; a gesture that bothered Maurice, but only dimly. 

Innocence was at the core of this guileless possession of one another. Maurice, slow-natured, did not question it. His thick brown hands would run down Clive’s neck, smooth and shaking slightly, and they went quiet by some unspoken rule that guided them throughout the year. Clive would stroke Maurice’s hair. 

They whispered each other’s names almost by accident. Any intimacy happened between them impromptu and unrehearsed. They would be lying side by side, Clive in his arms and Maurice’s head on his; their names were said. Maurice nuzzled closer to Clive, and the latter would say, _Maurice, Maurice_, over and over until one of them fell asleep and was heard no more. His friend had eyes poets would recognize as one of their own. 

Clive followed his affections with a blush. Hardly the one to ever initiate actions, Clive reserved his sensibilities and poured rivulets on paper. Maurice received poems— sometimes non-sensical, oftentimes ridiculous— from his friend, written in blank verses or Alexandrians. Maurice pinned them inside the pocket of his pyjamas and sensing the prickling of his thumb, Maurice would flush all the same. He recited the lines in an adoring manner that often exasperated Clive. 

The lines were passionate: Clive seemed to have taken an interest in Catullus and the likes of Sappho. Sometimes Maurice would regret the words written on paper instead of utterance on his friend’s lips, but every time he inquired about them Clive would stutter profusely, and finding that lovely, the subject was dropped in favour of embrace and light, innocent touches over neck and cheek. 

“I love you,” Maurice said. “You know I always have.”

He would often say that. Not that Clive was uncertain, for Clive was certain of most things in the world he deemed right, but Maurice simply wanted to say it, to admit some kind of defeat to the world, to his friend, so that he could smile and embrace him and say, _Maurice, Maurice_. 

Clive sometimes kissed him after these youthful declarations of love. His friend’s lips would tremble. Maurice's heart swelled; his eyes prickled with tears. His hair looked so radiant, always, even when ruffled and often dirty after a particularly rough exam session. To the world he would be beautiful, to Maurice he was the world’s desire, and desiring still, embraced him tighter, and tenderly, would breathe into his friend’s neck, smelling of old books and the tired use of ink. 

“I’m half-awake,” Clive mumbled. He just finished studying his Classics finals.

“You’re very endearing when you’re so.”

“I’m going to sleep.”

“You’re very warm. I love your hands.”

Clive wrapped his arms around Maurice and slept. Maurice loved gently that night, and loved softly at once. 

* * *

  
“Say, will you embrace me?” 

Maurice was surprised. Clive was in tears, and although he didn’t understand why, he immediately went to touch his friend’s arm. 

“What’s wrong?” He asked softly. 

“Things haven’t been right.”

Maurice was muddled. Clive turned his back to him, leaned his body toward the window. The wind was shrill today, and Clive was shaking all over. 

“What do you mean?”

Maurice slide his arms around his friend’s waist. The trembling only increased. 

“There’s a secret I want to tell you, Maurice,” he said. “There’s something very wicked in me. Very, very wicked.”

Maurice repeated the question. Clive finally turned around, his eyes red and his face even more so. His hair swirled wildly against the rugged wind. 

“I am damned. I’m dragging you with me.”

“Just don’t go anywhere I can’t follow you,” Maurice said. “I am fine as long you are there.”

“It’s dirty work.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Maurice looked at him. Clive started to drag a rough hand at his own hair, and before he could stop him, started pulling hard at the curls. Maurice gently took his wrists and ran his thumb down the throbbing vein, the blue that symbolised his friend's heart, and thus his. Clive was blinking; a nervous habit that occurred when one was besotted but dared not say so. 

“Can’t you embrace me?” He asked again, eyes not meeting his. He set down his hand. Some straying hairs have fallen on the ground. Then, with eyes gone intensively blue, he asked, “am I doing it wrong?”

Maurice embraced him. Like lovers, with all the tenderness that heaven promised and all the quiet suffering that hell believed. A sigh escaped them both, for there was nothing at the moment they could love but each other. 

He kissed Clive’s small brown head. The swirl of hair at the center of the brain. He touched it with reverence. Maurice found it soft, and laughed curiously at his own friend, who looked up in inquiry. 

“You’re a silly little fool, Clive,” Maurice said to him. “Mistakes are man-made. We are not of their sort. Bothering yourself with their law is immoral. Tearing your beauty apart must certainly be more illegal than this.” And he kissed him. 

Clive’s small frame shook with a chuckle. His eyes bore through him; Maurice knew exactly what sort of man he was. Maurice didn’t stop touching his friend’s face. He kissed his wet forehead and shed a few tears too, laying his head on his friend’s. Maurice whispered his name. Clive put all his weight on him, mingled their breath together. His hands stretched up to his friend’s, then in a whisper, _Maurice, Maurice_. He didn’t let go. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lied. there's another chapter despite popular demands. i swear this is the last

> _Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.   
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior._

Maurice woke up to the smell of clementine and Clive’s sticky hand on his cheek. 

It was morning and his friend was beautiful. Clive smiled and threw an orange peel at him; Maurice could only pretend to be offended. 

“I woke you up,” Clive said without apology. “Come here, you must taste this. It took me much effort to acquire the stock.” 

“Did I miss my lecture?”

“Oh, but there’s only so much to miss, Hall. Sit back.”

Clive resumed to his peeling. The morning sun was a bright yellow and some juice stained his friend’s hands orange. He brought a piece to Maurice’s lips. He obeyed and ate it and found it sweet; he was looking at Clive.

“How is it?” 

“You haven’t tried it yet?” 

Clive’s eyes widened. “Well, no. I was waiting for you to wake up.” 

Maurice took his hands in his and the stained juice stuck them together. “It is too sweet,” he said, “the clementine, I mean.”

Clive sat on the bed. His eyes drop to the sheets that covered Maurice’s half-naked body. “My hands are filthy. You mustn’t touch me like that,” he said, and didn’t move.

“It is sweet, I assure you,” he said, entwining their fingers. Clive leant toward him and rested his head on his friend’s naked shoulder. The fruit was on the bed, neglected and forgotten for something sweeter, down to the very bones. 

“Oh, you mustn’t say things like that and pretend it is nothing,” chided Clive. 

“It is not nothing,” protested Maurice, and softly, he said, “you have always been so hard to everyone and yourself, but you must realize that you’re always endearing in the morning. You would wake me up and feed me sweets and smile just as much. You’re lovely. I adore you.” 

Clive buried his head further in the crook of his shoulder. “You mustn’t say things and mean everything either,” he said, his lips tingling his naked skin. “One might get the wrong impression that I am not equally in love with you.” 

“Oh, damn the others.”

Clive paused. Then, with a slight nod, he uncovered Maurice’s sheets and ran one hand down his chest. They were breast to breast now, clasped together like they were one. No one dared to breathe just as no one could cease to love. Clive didn’t let go of his friend’s hand.

It occurred to Maurice, as he glimpsed to the view the window presented them, the same as yesterday night, in the great beauty of morning warmth and his friend’s arms around him, that Clive was a little less than god. He devoted an altar to Clive and cannot believe his luck when Clive summoned him back, in that intellectual way of his— both repelled and enchanted by the way Maurice’s person moved, talked, loved. 

Clive escaped his embrace slowly, then all at once. The morning sun turned and dawned on him, cold. He sat down on a chair beside his bed. He resumed the tedious work of peeling the fruit. 

“Look at me,” Maurice said, and noting that the tone was pleading already, tried to touch Clive’s stained hands. 

“I have looked enough today,” answered Clive. “One must reserve some beauty to himself if one wants to survive.”

“Clive, please. I want to see your eyes.”

His curls wavered when he smiled. His cheeks were red when he handed him the rest of the clementine. With a fist full of peels, he said, “you have no idea how beautiful you are. I have read about beauty. Immaturely, perversely, passionately. Have witnessed in my earlier days the faded charms from those I admired. But you,” Clive continued with sentiment, “you are Eros’ own. One cannot love you and feel worthy of it.” 

Maurice ate the fruit without protest. No one spoke. Maurice too confused by the grandeur of the statement, and Clive, seeing everything too acutely, was too afraid to speak again out in the light. He was accustomed in admitting his perversion only to the dark confines of his mind. 

The taste of clementine stayed with Maurice for the rest of the day. Sometime later, when Clive’s words wouldn’t torment him as much, Maurice dared to name sweetness as a form of love, but never its opposite. He felt it too, in the Goblin House or in that morning light that shone so beautifully on his friend, to love kneeling to the Pan. Maurice never felt like this, with love in his head, on his lips, on the tip of his toes, he uttered his friend’s name and their voices would superpose, form between them the only union that was allowed. Clive’s eyes are looking up at him, his mouth whispered an unheard, blemish prayer to someone Maurice did not know. 

Maurice felt it dimly, but Clive would remind him. His world went round, and the other side came up. He felt pantheistic for the first time in his orthodox education. Clive’s heart would beat in his ribs and his in Clive’s and both in God’s, and that was all. 

* * *

They went out arms in arms down the hall and braved the first snow. When Maurice beckoned him over with a red nose and a grin, Clive muttered a line about how he is too much in the sun. 

They wrestled. With snow at first, in the ordinary carelessness of boys, then with their body. Clive, being the weaker one, got the back of his shirt wet when Maurice pinned him on the ground. Never one to be treated so casually, Clive laughed delightfully and dragged Maurice down the wet white snow with him and felt grateful. He enjoyed being thrown about by a handsome and powerful boy. 

They stayed like that for a while— their thighs touching and their heads up to the sky. No one noticed them. It was as if they were finally safe from the eyes of the world when they lay low, their white breaths mingling in the air. 

Maurice said conciliatorily, “let’s make peace, Durham. The least I want is to hurt you.”

Clive was silent. Maurice turned to him; both their hair damped with snow. His friend closed his eyes. 

“I want to hold your body,” Clive admitted in a breath. 

“Then do it.”

“Don’t tell me,” he said, his words flying out, white and so, so quiet. “I’ll do it but don’t say it. Quiet is the only talk I can deal with now.”

They got up, quickly, impatiently. They ran to the hallways, tumbled to the stairs, to Clive’s room, where his friend embraced him with a fever that Maurice understood and abandoned himself entirely to it. It wasn’t excitement, as lust flashed on and off like the flickering of old lanterns, but it was intense, passionate, inextinguishable; it was not so much that their hearts would separate, but torn asunder, in an unrepairable, irretrievable way if they were to part. Clive ran down his hand down his spine, then up and down, then again, and again. 

Maurice was backed to a wall. His friend’s height made it so that he can put his head on Clive’s. Maurice observed the impersonal room: books checked out from the library, photos of Cambridge spring, pen and paper, unfinished writing. He discerned from a distance, between the scribblings and the doodles, a familiar word. 

“My name,” remarked Maurice. 

Clive made no movement.

“You wrote my name,” he pointed at his writing desk. 

“Just some unfinished musings,” Clive said quickly. Maurice went to gently caress his friend’s hair. 

“I hope it’s nothing bad, old man,” he said teasingly. “I wouldn’t want you to despise me.”

“I wouldn’t hate you for anything, Maurice,” Clive replied, his eyes dropping to the paper. “You must know that.”

“I do—” once again they embraced, without thinking nor compromise, and in a beat, he said, jokingly at first, then suddenly not: “darling.”

Clive laughed; turned into a smile when they looked at each other in the eye. “My love,” he said, and for a moment Maurice believed in everything. “My love, my very own,” Clive continued, his eyes twinkling, “my heart of hearts.”

“Don’t jest, Clive.”

“It wouldn’t be in a happier year,” Clive said. “I know history— I know names. None of them are ours. Another time, Maurice. Then it will remember us, happy and dear and basked in the sun. Now we have each other. I shall love you until I am dead and happy. I shall love you until misery dawns and hell is emptied. I love you; do keep me.”

“Is that what you wrote on your damnable poem?”

Clive blinked, then nodded. Maurice cupped his friend's face; it became warm within seconds. 

“Say that to me again,” Maurice implored. “Say that to me everyday. I don’t need your damn papers. I don’t need your penmanship, that’s for history. In a more enlightened time they will publish your poems and see how in love we are. _I_ don’t need these. I want your words on your lips and your lips against mine. I will keep you forever if you let me be yours. I am your own. I am your very own.”

That taste of clementine returned again as he said those words. Some melodies, though not Tchaikovsky’s Sixth, echoed from the music hall. Clive hummed Lensky’s aria in Maurice’s arms. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at this point I will just stop pretending that I won't write more   
to eyeslikerain: I hope this gift is not too extended and isn't dreadful to read! it just happens when you write about clive's pov that things get considerably sadder

> _Per caputque pedesque. _

Clive didn’t believe in death. The numbness; the potential _relief_ it promised was too charming for Clive to dwell on. Its appeal was in the cleanness of its product, the litany it delivered; one could be reborn there, and Clive, who’s whole boyhood was a series of undefended and undefinable trials against himself, was afraid of its promising, glimmering pull. He pictured death a woman.

The beloved had his head on Clive’s knees. His hands remained on his cover of Ethics. Maurice’s quiet snores had disturbed his reading, though he knew it wasn’t that, not exactly. 

_But is it good?_ he thought, not daring to ask the underlining question of: _are we good?_ Clive believed in the good, edging toward the Platonic. He did not carry any illusions that he was good. He had stopped mocking himself years ago. Clive adopted Diotima’s teachings rather than Alcibiades’, in hopes that youth corrupted less than his own tainted soul. 

Maurice: big, taunt fellow, twice his size, curled further into his lap. There was something soft and moist in him— a dare, a rage, an intolerable tenderness. The beloved’s lashes fluttered; Clive put his Aristotle down.

Clive wanted his hands on the pianola again, wanting to feel the harmonious. He picked up music as a practice to resemble father. There would be portraits of him in the house— him on the violin— Clive had imagined father to be immense. Father was noble, grand, ineffable, lacking the distinct Roman nose of the Durhams. It was abominable to see him hanged on those four walls, green and hideous; to believe that it was his true form, a man, rather than something better, something worthy; something _good_. 

He liked Mozart as a child, drawn to Tchaikovsky despite himself. Clive looked at his shelf— a small little book wrapped in brown paper. He would prefer Mozart’s _Requiem_ if it brought him any salvation. Instead he must hide Tchaikovsky’s biography and to reduce it to the shelf. It wasn’t that the book referenced the morbid, but it was comforting to see it brown and quiet. It had brought him joy to see it so self-contained, the lines restrained, and words picked wordlessly, with that sense of calm that Clive could never have when glimpsing at his own sin. Clive’s fingers tapped the first phase of _Requiem_ on the table. 

There were dreams full of harmonic scales. To the ears it would be divine, but Clive saw through the disheartening veils of heaven and touched its fires; he did not believe in heaven. A yawn pulled him back to the dreams and further down to hell. 

“You needn’t to take care of me,” said the beloved, awaken to the sound. Clive was afraid that Maurice was influenced by his present mind instead, chaotic and cacophonic, none of it good. The voice was human, and Clive shivered as it lowered an octave. “I have never gotten sick before.”

An off-handed comment, but terrifying. That woman in his dreams returned, beckoning him closer to the music. Clive felt the need to apologize. “I must have had a cold when we went to the snow,” he said. “You look so healthy, Hall. I haven’t felt the need to protect yourself from me.”

“Don’t say that, Durham. You know that’s not true.”

“I thought we were speaking feelings, not facts.”

“What do you think, then?”

“Of what?”

“Me,” said the beloved on the bed. He sneezed into his hand. 

“You’re sick,” Clive remarked. 

Neither of them felt the need to say anything special. Clive didn’t expect Maurice’s verdict just as he wouldn’t be abashed if it ever was to happen again. His heart was in agony, the same it had always been. Someone could see his grief or not, that wasn’t the matter; he simply wasn’t going to allow anyone to share it, for fear of corruption. The woman in his dream smiled, touched his cheek. He was appalled of the idea of a kiss. 

“Clive—” Maurice began but didn’t finish. Clive opened his Aristotle. 

“Stay in bed,” he said, and confidently, added, “I’ll take care of it. I’m hardly doctor, Hall, but cures are easy to find once you nick-pick the root of the problem.”

Maurice fell asleep, his brain at first, his weakest organ. His limbs reacted, however, when Clive shook him slightly. It was already night. He handed him a glass of water. 

“Good night, good night,” Clive said. He kissed his damped forehead. Maurice caught his hand when he tried to move away. 

“Do stay.”

Clive knew this was the illness talking. The disease was strong and infectious; it made his heart tremble. He wasn’t humble. He knew his own worth, but the belief that he was damned from the first made him hate the world. Now the world smiled at him and had his arms extended; Clive was weary and couldn’t return the embrace. 

He had long since rejected Christianity; with the idea of redemption lost to him, Clive searched for asceticism instead. He was all alone, and it had once comforted him. The beloved was a reach toward the ideas: wisdom, beauty, all that was good. Clive wanted to be good. It was the one thing he demanded from the world and it gave him Maurice. Clive couldn’t not make him good, and thus all things fell apart, and he was alone again. Hope could not shimmer this time, nor Maurice’s call woke him from anything but the smiling woman in his dreams, waiting for a kiss. 

“Why should I stay?” He asked, trying to provoke. “Hall, you’re sick, go back to bed.”

“I am, I am, I am,” babbled Maurice, “I am already on the bloody bed. I’m asking you to join me.”

“I will go sick.”

Maurice smiled, unconsciously lovely. He stretched out a hand. “Why are you crying?” He said softly, smiling with his feverish eyes. “Oh, darling, come here.”

“You’re sick,” Clive stressed. “You’re seeing things.”

“I am seeing you,” Maurice confirmed. “You’re still the most beautiful person I have ever seen.”

Clive was lost. “I am not crying.”

Maurice laughed, low and steady. He closed his eyes, took his hand in his. “I can see your tears,” he said, “I can see you.”

“And,” he paused, then braved through, “how is that not enough for you?”

Maurice sat on the bed. His cheeks flushed; his lips glimmered with sweat. “You’re enough for me,” he said. 

Clive laughed. The image of the white woman in his dream followed his music and disappeared hand in hand in the gray mist. His mind became clear for the first time in days. Dante would have called that an awakening, but Clive was too concentrated on Maurice’s words to ponder on that slip. The beloved is good, a voice whispered. Maurice will fill the silence with silence and Clive would hum to it like he would to a most exquisite symphony. 

He took his sick friend in his arms; his lips touched his breath. Maurice pushed him away half-heartily, mumbling about the disease. Clive didn’t tell him about that it hardly mattered, that sickness was something he was used to, but he let Maurice took him inside his sheets and pressed his cheek on his hand. He hadn’t the heart to tell him that he was tainted from the first, nor to mention the knowing smile that woman gave him before taking her leave. How Mozart’s music was distasteful then, compared to Maurice’s content sigh when he settled beside him and slept. Clive didn’t sleep, nor did he think. He let his arms loose and cried. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr is having some troubles and I can't log in, but I sure as hell can appreciate the writing and the awesome being that is eyeslikerain through fanfic dedication! I'll make Clive and Maurice cry in every chapter and no one can stop me. 
> 
> If this chapter looks suspiciously like the other ones it's because it does. They will hug and kiss with no setting nor timeline nor any semblance of plot. This place is for chaotic tenderness and that's it, sorry.

> _Quid datur a divis felici optatius hora?_

“I don’t think it is appropriate,” Clive mumbled against Maurice’s shoulder. They were on the bed, limbs draped awkwardly on each other; Maurice’s bare back touching the wall.

The celling was white and impeccably barren. His heart was full as he closed the distance between them and kissed Clive’s cheek. There was a sound; an almost annoyance. 

“Maurice!” was the scandalized retort. “Were you listening?”

“I was,” he answered; he thought he had always. 

“Good. Then you must get off me.”

“You’re very warm.”

“That is not the point,” then came a grumble, "besides, I think we have established that you're warmer."

It _was_ very warm. Clive turned his back to him and got up. He was clothed from head to toe, and his eyes felt naked. It was a frequent occurrence in Clive. He would want and look, but never at the same time. 

“Come back to bed,” urged Maurice, hesitant like the soft, blooming hues of the first spring. “I'm sick. You promised to tend me.” Clive did not make such promises. But he wanted to keep him here, warm and woven together, calm and content. "Come back."

“You wouldn’t know. You don’t understand,” Clive started, his gaze distant. “It’s not appropriate.”

“Nothing that we do here can condemn us.”

“Maurice,” and Clive sighed, shook his head as if in pity. “It does not matter what we _do_. The mind— the _mind_ is all that we have. Everything else is _rubbish_, superfluous. Once the mind is corrupted, there is nothing left but our own conscience. Whatever this is, this, between us—” Clive gestured vaguely and painfully, “it is irretrievably mundane. Stale. _Tainted_. Don't you see?"

“My conscience is clean, and so should yours,” he tried. “I adore you— whatever it is in me that devotes to you— the mind, the soul or the body, it does not matter. I simply do. There’s nothing in the world simpler than me. You know that— I’m easy. Do let me ease you.”

For a brief, tantalizing moment, Clive seemed to forget about the melancholy. There appeared the man that Maurice got a glimpse of when Clive’s eyes were clammed yet certain, when adoration flooded his senses, when Clive confessed and heard _rubbish_ and took it for an answer. The exact expression mirrored that exact moment; the same emotion of confusion, and gratitude. Clive looked about to speak— of horrors, of worship, of incredulity; he shut his mouth and frowned instead. 

“Never mind,” Clive crossed his arms loosely in defeat. “Stay here if you want. I’m off.” And he all but rushed to the door; closed it softly and threaded quietly on the soles of his shoes. 

Maurice understood mildly. He looked at his hands, then wondered what Clive must have seen. A bruise had formed on the arm, perhaps from Clive’s constant press of hand across during the night— perhaps from wrestling with students of his year. He dared to stand up and looked at himself in a mirror. It was absurdly difficult to notice the thin veil of hair over chest; the small defeats of boyhood. Clive couldn’t have been horrified by him; Maurice, ever the ideal of youth, possessed also its pride— but his body— toned and awkward, such was the intrigue of teenage limbs— this body could be a subject of concern. 

He never noticed before. His hair, while washed, was unkept. The softness of his stomach and the inadequacy of his steps. All these seemed to him like a credited reason for Clive’s coldness; all these stemmed from Clive’s glances toward him; his body. Maurice shuddered at the thought for the possibility of any underlying disgust that might have prompted today’s argument. He loved himself like any man loved his constitution, but if Clive were to declared him unworthy, he would believe it. But Clive never declared such things— his friend would always look away and feigned holy silence. 

When they met again, it was a week later. Maurice knew how these one-side quarrels went— since they never fought with each other, only with time— he would find Clive in his study room and they would embrace without words, would share their heartbeats somewhere along unuttered lines of love. And yet when Maurice arrived at Clive’s door, expecting the same scenario played like a play on stage, his friend just held out a hand without looking from his writing desk; the Platonic idea of restraint. 

“Your arm,” Clive ordered. “Let me see.”

“Alright,” he said. It was his custom reply. 

The chair creaked as Clive shifted his position to examine Maurice; the latter stretched out his hand dutifully. He failed to resist a gasp when Clive’s warm fingers moved to his clothed arm and led him over. 

“Let me see,” he whispered again. Tentative, almost shy, Clive pulled at the sleeve and sighed over the fading bruises. “I knew I was holding on too hard. Nightmares,” he explained and placed a kiss on them; almost sacred, almost loving. 

Clive was cruel; he was tender without meaning to. He wore love on his sleeve; guilt rooted at its core. Clive was a priest waiting for the layout of his marriage tables. Maurice gasped; the gentle, forgiving touch of it all made him tremble. “I thought you were cross with me,” he said weakly, slowly moving his other hand to Clive’s hair. 

“I wasn’t,” Clive said quietly. “I have never, I hope you would know that.”

“I was afraid.” 

Clive leaned on the hand in his hair. He sighed. “You have nothing to be afraid of,” he closed his eyes and moved to kiss the palm. “There’s nothing you need to understand. You don’t need to.”

Maurice snatched away his hand. Clive looked on. “I was afraid you thought me hideous.”

Similar to the confession— though this one was quieter, less invasive; revelatory. It was a step away from the romantic; one foot in reality, and the muddy feeling of dread spiraled down the pool of his stomach made him silent once and for all. Sometimes Maurice believed that he and Clive had nothing in common— but he saw Clive broke, piece by piece, until all was left was this piece of blunt clay, waiting to be assembled as a two-piece set. Maurice was afraid of the dark— the absence of light— and now light had a name. 

He was startled by Clive, who laughed and laughed and shook as if he wanted to shake that statement away from the ears. “What— you—” he trailed. “Bloody hell, you really don’t know, do you— your—” and he flushed, then shook his head with more rigor. “You really have no idea,” he whispered to himself, in awe.

“What is it?” 

A darker shade, now. “I—” he gaped. “Forget it.”

“I want to know.”

“I said forget it,” Clive mumbled and returned tending Maurice’s wounds. He treated his bruises clumsily, like an unpracticed rugger player. Clive must have felt the tension of his muscles; the boiling blood beneath the blue veins. “Sorry,” Clive said to the rising skin. 

“Please,” he all but begged, “I want to know.”

“Maurice,” he stalled, “it’s not important. You’re simply— I just think that you’re—"

“I am well aware of my less than attractive attributes,” he quickly added, “I just want you to be honest, Clive. You are beautiful, and I-” he stopped without thinking. “I am aware, trust me, I am. I just want to understand.”

“You don’t need to understand.”

“I _want_ to.”

And Clive, sitting on his chair like a true regal prince, was going to bite off his own hand. No one dared to be holy, this time; no one dared silence as a way of answer. They loved, and loved tamely, outside of the wilderness. You would ask Clive love, and he would point you the grave. Clive loved society as much as he loved Maurice, and Maurice loved Clive as much his friend allowed him, that allowance society granted or denied happily like all scandalous things were treated; with pleasure, with malice. Clive braced himself, looking ready for its blow. 

“You’re-- _lovely_,” Clive breathed out; quiet like a bird’s attempt to fly. “You’re breathtakingly lovely. You’re slow, and you’re the best, most handsome man I know. You’re dim and I want to hold unto that. Your— your _loveliness_. You are— you are a damn miracle, Maurice. I don’t know what to do with you,” he said, looking torn. He rushed a hand through his hair. “Do tell me what to do, will you? I'll do anything you ask."

And it was then Maurice saw it. The dark circles under the eyes, the slumping shoulder, and all that entailed. They were tired and had only each other to hold. It was easy; it should be easy. Clive was making this difficult; a bright-eyed, quiet insecurity lurking, crawling in their skin in the name of love. Maurice had never felt so elated, so ready to soar. 

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Well then,” resumed Maurice; tested the weight of the question of his tongue. 

"Do go on."

“What do you want?” Sensing the confusion in Clive, he continued. “I will do what you don’t want to. Just tell me. I’ll give it. I’ll give everything.”

"It is not about what I want."

"Of course it is," he urged. "You said you would do anything. Do answer my question."

“What I want is enormous," he answered after a prolonged second; answered weakly. "Too much."

A truth found its way out. “My life is yours if you desire to keep it.”

Clive blinked, then twisted his brows. He stared at his arm, then inclined his head, gently putting the damp forehead there, warm and pious. “Maurice,” Clive said his name like he would when stumbled upon a particular line in Plato. The emotion that one had when being understood so thoroughly and completely; the returning feeling of having that comfort forever, in books, in verses, in the heart of a person. “Oh god," he held Maurice's face; he prayed, "never leave me.”

Maurice allowed himself to sit on the large study chair; their thighs touching. A cosmic second, when Maurice wondered out loud. "That’s what you want?” Clive nodded, and he couldn’t help but add: “That’s it?”

Clive’s whole body curled into him, his forehead nuzzling against his naked arm; locks of hair on his arm, tickling every part of him alive. Clive kissed the bruise. And again. And again. 

“You don’t need to understand,” Clive said, the image of piousness. "I-- Will you stay?” It wasn't a question. 

“You know that I will.” It was an answer. 

His friend moved; gently placed himself on Maurice’s lap. Light and shy, Clive arched his back and kissed his forehead. And again. And again. Their heads pressed together, wild words formed and took flight; Clive laughed at them, but he wasn't cruel. He looked a bit like he was dreaming, a bit like he was in love. 

“Alright,” his friend replied, then soft with tears, mingled with Maurice’s own, “alright, love.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foreshadowing for post-part three of _Maurice_ and just general stubbornness from both parties to get over their differences.

_Irascor tibi. Sic meos amores?_  
_Paulum quid lubet allocutionis,_  
_maestius lacrimis Simonideis._

“I have loved others before you,” admitted Maurice. “Many others.” 

The halls were empty at night. There was a hollow sound every time they trailed upon the soles of their shoes, scraping the concrete. _Something wicked this way comes_. Clive rested his head on the vector, a small smile on his face. 

“Midnight confession, Hall? How Orthodox of you.”

Given the nature of that confession, Clive knew that it wasn’t; he simply felt warm enough to tease. No jealousy for the compassionate, and although Clive envied the simple, care-free nature of his beloved, he did not mind that his love’s soul mingled with others once. Maurice’s large body slipped against his. They looked on; thighs touching innocently. If they looked about, they might believe it to be a shadow of their own dream. 

“Names?” Asked Clive, diving straight to the silent night, his head making its way to his friend’s shoulder. 

“He was called—“ and there Maurice tried to think. “George." He did not mention that he was the garden boy, for fear that Clive will turn out affronted, "and some others at my school— Peter, I believe. Peter. Peter and— the other names are lost to me.”

“That’s alright,” soothed Clive. “You left them, anyway.” 

“I let them go, mostly.”

“You do,” Clive answered conspiratorially. The moon didn’t light their way; the pavement was dark. It felt forbidden. “You will. Always.” 

“I won’t. Not with you.”

Clive looked on as if he pitied him. “Now, now,” he cooed, “you’re making it hard for me.” 

“I’m not going to leave you. I thought we established that.” 

“You _will_ love me. You’ll stay, I am sure. I will stay with you. My mind will be full of you until the day I get fixed. And you have fixed my life – however short.” Clive crossed his arms, fingers drumming a slow tune on his arm. It became more spasmodic as he went on, “you did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. You spun round me like a satellite for a month, but you shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where I will blaze. It is some consolation to know that Jupiter himself sometimes swims out of Ken! But there’s only so much that we can do.” 

“But I will be there,” protested Maurice. “My mind— my body— all of it.” 

“And thy eternal summer shall not fade?” Clive proposed with a laugh. “Forget it. English poets write sonnets to prove their skills over to the Italians. I also loved before; I know the course. I’m willing to believe you— how good you are, how good you are to me— yet belief is based on love, and when it is not guided by the Platonic, as I do to you sometimes, it is fallible. Two men can only share on basis of the mind. It’s only fair for you to seek baser things, according to your nature. I’m surprised it lasted more than three weeks.” 

“I can’t tell if you’re insulting me or not.” 

“I’m enumerating,” Clive’s head turned to him, a hint of a glint in his eyes. “Because I understand, I really do. I have understood no man but you. Your mind is dull; it sparkles most delightfully when I am around.” 

“Don’t be pompous,” laughed Maurice, intertwining their hands. “I know I am stupid. You couldn’t have served more as a reminder.”

“I don’t mind it. I find it charming. But I admit I do like guiding you.” 

“To where?” 

“Nowhere,” Clive said, with all the wistfulness of troubled youth, “it is the only place we can be.”

As Maurice bid his friend goodbye with a kiss on the forehead, he began to wonder about the place: if there exists such a thing. Ought Maurice understand him? Ought Maurice follow him? Ought Maurice weep or laugh or love? For Clive—for all the boys he once held affection for and lifted him out of the mire— where liberty breathed life unto him; what place, what place, what place.

* * *

“What if we ran away?”

Clive frowned. They just sat through the morning mass; the dark colours still swimming before Maurice’s eyes. He could not get any sleep last night, suffered from both the ideal and the brutal. They did not sit together at breakfast— that wouldn’t be proper, but Maurice caught hold of him during meal, and at break, they ran to the most deserted place in the Trinity and shared a kiss. In the dizziness of the sun and Clive, Maurice tried again. 

“We can run away. Just you and me.”

Clive fell silent. The smile on his face urged him to go on; so Maurice did: “We can, I tell you. Abandon England. Abandon traditions. We abandoned Orthodoxy; that was the hard part. The rest will follow. We can go everywhere— nowhere— we can go, you and I.” He did not add that he will stay with him on the cliffs; to the end of the world. It always seemed to him that Clive was standing on a precipice, beckoning him hither. It was self-evident by the way Maurice held him; a given as simple as the dust on cathedral roofs. 

The wind chilled his thoughts, wild and whirling as they were. It sealed his lips tight just as Clive’s loosened. “Adam,” he said. The word floated, slightly pitched. “His name was Adam,” Clive sighed, gaining confidence, answering nothing and everything at the same time. “A cousin twice removed. Recently married by the time I became infatuated with him. Most indecently, might I add, when he kindly visited me after my— episode.”

Clive stopped himself to look at Maurice. The wind bristled. “I considered telling him. A schoolboy like myself, like you, would have thought: ‘Leave your fiancée. Leave everything. We can be somewhere happy, somewhere worthwhile,’ because my cause—not hers— is worthy, because reproduction of bodies is lesser than that of the soul.” His laughter snuffled out; a brief candle. “I was glad I didn’t.”

“Well, _I’m_ glad I did,” Maurice continued, “this— us— it is not about infatuation. He wasn’t worth it, that was all.”

Clive’s hugged himself; a different chill ran down his spine. 

“What is this about, then?”

Maurice couldn’t answer. He never could when people confronted him. 

“This could be about love,” suggested Clive. The Church bells rang; the voice, once superposed with the rings, covered his whole world. “This should be about love. Love— possession, rebellion, romance—crimes of _passion_, a most delicate _indecency_,” the word was said with a particular distaste. “I’m happy to know what you think, but please, for the love of whatever is above— don’t bring this up again.”

“I dreamt about it yesterday night,” Maurice said. “We were happy.”

“We _are_ happy. Like anyone under that star,” Clive answered half-heartedly and took out his pocket watch. “Don’t fret too much upon it. I will walk you to your room. I’ll stay for tea if you like, although I can only stay for that long since I have a lecture to attend. It’s Professor Mill, you have to understand; I simply cannot miss.”

When he stepped away from him, Clive’s face was barred with light. “There’s nowhere for us,” he said finally. “We can’t, in fact, ask ourselves to love each other always. But I do ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am today.”

“Now, come!” Clive whispered joyfully, letting go of his hand. “I can’t be late,” he said, and out of some eternal thought his friend began to walk away, clothed in gray, shaking out the scents and sounds of the winter snow. 

* * *

When the night came, they reunited at once. The chill settled in their bones, a knowing sign that spring was near. 

Maurice had the thrill down to his veins; to climb up the balcony, true of for all lovers, to see his friend there, waiting, smiling as he have said— said— will say: “Hall, your physical prowess is your lone Classical feature,” so that when they touched Clive can whisper: “how I wish for your soul,” and wouldn’t continue.

They had to part as the night went on. The thought bothered him. The bed wrinkled when they sat, then winded when Maurice stood up.

They were in their usual position: Maurice, sitting beside him, stroking his friend’s hair. His hand ran absentmindedly through the curls, as if it sought another place instead. Clive must have noticed, because he asked for the time, and prompted him to go as to not get discovered when there would be light by the break of dawn. 

Maurice obeyed. He did so out of love; out of habit. There was a daunting question left hanging— their previous discussion heavy in the air. Clive noticed, he always did, and tried to soothe him the only way he would. 

“You must leave, Maurice,” he said, “we all do. But I promise you’ll stay here—” he touched Maurice’s head, then down toward his lids, then further to his lips. Maurice parted them, but Clive resisted. “After-all, you promised you would stay with me. It would unpolite of me not to reciprocate.” 

“I don’t think I can live without you,” he said. Clive, taken aback by the sincerity in the statement, leaned in and kissed him gently on the lips. 

“Oh, you can,” Clive then said, cruel once again, “and you will. Man prides himself to be a social animal, but solitude precedes existence. There will always be another, and soon my name will be spoken like all those you have loved before.” And adopting the voice of a preacher, Clive said, “it is by then that I will stay. It is by then that I will live truly— where we abandon the body and adopt our minds.”

For the first time, Maurice felt uneasy. A stab of anger, not incomprehension, ran through him; flickered hot and brief like Clive’s touches. He was so used to loving Clive that he excluded all other feelings in his presence. They parted silently, too harshly on Maurice’s part perhaps, since he always was the one was who manifested love in all its self-aggrandizing image, but no word was spoken when Maurice stepped out and reached the ground— Clive’s head peaking out the window— no love uttered when they whispered: “good night! Good night!” to the unfaithful sun, who resurfaced too soon when they called for light. 

Maurice walked with a certain dread in his heart. He felt Clive’s sincere but placid love._ Swear not by the moon._ A force stronger than love was guiding his friend, but he didn’t dare name it, for fear that it may come true when spoken out loud. He took a breath and listen to the old brag of his heart; Maurice failed at poems, but he recognized the slow, drumming pattern of their beats. 

He was afraid that this was the end, without twilight or compromise, that he should leave his friend one day, never to cross his track again, nor speak to those who has seen him. He waited for a little by the foot of the stairs, then returned to his room, to correct his morning assignments and to devise some method of concealing the truth from the world the place— where it would glimmer, ferns undulate; what place, what place, what place. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end! Thanks for sticking to the end; I wasn't expecting this to turn out to be five chapters instead of one, but I do hope you enjoyed it. If you catch the cameos of the original text from _Maurice_ in this one, you get a gold star!


End file.
